Ecuador says it will comply with Occidental arbitration award

QUITO Nov 4 (Reuters) - Ecuador will comply with a World
Bank tribunal award to pay $1.061 billion to Occidental
Petroleum Corp in compensation for seizing the company's
assets, the country's finance minister said on Wednesday, adding
that Ecuador would seek financing.

A decision by the International Centre for Settlement of
Investment Disputes (ICSID) released on Monday ordered Ecuador
to pay that amount, a reduction of 40 percent from the original
award announced in 2012.

"As a sovereign country, we are going to comply fully with
the international courts," Finance Minister Fausto Herrera told
reporters. "We are going to continue working and negotiating in
order to find a means of financing these resources."

He did not offer details.

Ecuador in 2006 seized the field known as Block 15 from
Occidental, arguing the company had sold the field to China's
Andes Petroleum without government consent.

At the time of the contract termination, Occidental was
Ecuador's largest oil investor, extracting around 100,000
barrels of oil per day.

U.S.-based Occidental filed a request for arbitration in
July 2006. Ecuador has 11 arbitration cases pending against it,
four of them at ICSID.

The dollarized Andean country is suffering from low oil
prices as well as the appreciation of the greenback, which makes
its export businesses less competitive.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Girish Gupta;
Editing by Brian Ellsworth and Leslie Adler)